I 
204 /GROWTH 0/ T E A. 
The prefent occafion awakens a thought which has often di- 
fturbed my dreams. If my prefent fpeeulation is but a dream, 
I think it my happinefs, that the fubjeft of it is the love of my 
country. It is indeed a concern of a very interefting nature ; 
and there is more reafon to expedt redrefs from the ladies of 
this land, than from the moft learned divine, or the ableft 
ftatefman. 
The matter is this. I have long confidered tea, not only as 
a prejudicial article of commerce ; but alfo of a moft pernicious 
tendency with regard to domeftic induftry and labor ; and very 
injurious to health. I am not bias’d by any private motives or 
partial confederations ; and tho’ many have had much better op- 
portunities of underftanding the fubje<ft than myfelf ; yet no 
perfon, that I know of, has entered fairly into the merits of it 
in the different lights it appears to me. 
You who have drank tea fo often, muft have frequently heard 
the fubjedt of its growth difcuffed very learnedly, and perhaps 
without one fingle word of truth. For my own part I have 
heard variety of accounts, and it is but lately I received any fa- 
tisfa<ftion. 
You may be affured that the places of the growth of bohea 
and green tea are different. Bohea tea, which the Chinese 
call boui, or tcha bou, i. e. tea bohea, grows in fo-kien, and 
other provinces, moftly in the latitude of 24, to 28. The 
fhrub. which produces this leaf, thrives moft on riftng ground, 
in which they make furrows to carry off the water. The di- 
ftindion of the taftes of tea, arifes in fome meafure from the 
feafons, 
